


12 Days of Christmas 2019 Day 2

by PatchworkIdeas



Series: GatheringFiKi 12 Days of Christmas 2019 [2]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Family Issues, Gen, Happy Ending, Head Injury, Light Angst, M/M, SneakyKili
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21793321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkIdeas/pseuds/PatchworkIdeas
Summary: Thorin summons Fili and Kili for a Christmas Dinner after a major fallout. Things go about as well as expected.
Relationships: Fíli/Kíli (Tolkien)
Series: GatheringFiKi 12 Days of Christmas 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1569745
Comments: 10
Kudos: 30
Collections: GatheringFiKi - 12 Days OF Christmas 2019





	12 Days of Christmas 2019 Day 2

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by GatheringFiKi's gorgeous Photoset!
> 
> Posted here with permission, and can be found on Tumblr [here](https://gatheringfiki.tumblr.com/post/189666451219/12-days-of-christmas-day-2-bonus-fullsize-fili)

* * *

The suit itched, and Fili couldn't hold it against Kili that he kept fidgeting with his collar. They just didn't fit quite right anymore.  
Or maybe it was the memory of the last occasion that he wore his to, of that funeral years ago, that made the suit feel like it suffocated him.

The house that used to be their home loomed above them, and Fili wondered if it had always seemed so threatening, like a monster ready to devour them. He had never known anyone who could make Christmas lights seem menacing, but Thorin had never been just anyone.

-

They were lead into the giant dining hall. Lead, as if they didn't know exactly where everything was, as if this hadn't been their _home_ for the biggest part of their lives.  
A table that easily fit dozens of people, dozens of friends, set for just three, leagues between them. Thorin on one side, Fili on the other. Kili in between, border and spoils all in one. 

Lovely. 

Fili hadn't known that he could grow to hate family, but he had.

Kili had wanted to hope, hope that maybe their leaving almost a year ago had managed to break Thorin out of it, to put some sense back into someone who should have been their saviour after their mother's death, yet had proved to be nothing but their enemy.  
The Thorin that stood before them now, dark eyes, vaguely threatening smile, clear distain when looking at Fili... 

No.  
There had been no change.

Thorin hadn't wanted to invite Fili back into his house. He was just trying to convince Kili to return, to take back his place as the favourite and become the heir of one of the richest men in the world again.  
Fili knew he wouldn't do it. Kili wouldn't leave him, regardless of what he was offered. If there was one thing he was certain of it was that. 

So why were they _here_?

It was a question that kept repeating in his head while Thorin tried to force him to play piano for them again. Knowing full well that he had quit, after pouring years and years of tears and sweat into it and never meeting Thorin's unreasonable expectations.  
Mother had eased the sting, when she was still around. Tried to tell him that his uncle was pushing him because he saw greatness in him.  
But Fili couldn't see it anymore, after she was gone.  
It always felt like Thorin just set him up to fail, all so he had another proof of Fili not being worthy. 

He was so sick of chasing after an approval that would never come. And he would not let Thorin take anymore from him then he already had.

So Fili kept his eyes on his him, stepped in between when Thorin tried to talk to Kili on his own, tried to separate them.  
He answered the questions, always on the lookout for traps. Carefully swallowing his responses to the thinly veiled insults.  
He mechanically ate the food, though everyone at the table _knew_ that he hated both livers and apples and pretty much every single dish that made its way to the table. 

Guess here was the proof that Thorin had paid attention to him after all.

Fili appreciated Kili's protests. He noticed his brothers white knuckled grip on the cutlery from the corner of his eye. He recognised the frustration in every line of Kili's body. 

But his attention was on Thorin, had to be on Thorin, because if he had learned one thing from his uncle, it was that you don't show your back to an enemy.

-

Looking back, Fili didn't know if Thorin had planned this too, a final proof of his lack of worth, a final insult, or if it really was just an accident.  
If he had paid so much attention to Thorin's every move that he didn't see the waiter.  
He was never quite sure what exactly happened. There had been pain and blood and he hadn't been able to open his left eye.  
He remembers Thorin screaming at him and desperately trying to keep his right eye on him, never letting him out of his sight. 

He remembers Kili, voice icy like he had never heard him before, not even on the day Thorin threw him out of his childhood home and Kili followed. 

He doesn’t remember the journey home. 

He had been there, in that house, with that man, because Kili, upon getting that darn letter, had dared to hope for a Christmas Miracle, for a family on the mend. 

Fili would give the world to his brother, but he couldn't give him that. 

-

It was the sting of alcohol on the cuts on his face that brought him out of his brooding.  
Kili had cleaned most of them as good as he could, but they didn't have a lot of options in their little one room apartment in one of the cheapest parts of the city. 

They didn't even have this in the beginning.  
Just friends who let them crash for a few days, hastily gotten jobs after the sudden loss of their college tuition and eventually just enough for this.  
Kili could have had so much more, without him. 

But he was still here, for better or worse. 

His arms shot out, pulling his brother close, chin on his head, arms all around. He ignored Kili's indignant squawk, caught off guard by Fili's sudden movement.  
He breathed. 

"I'm sorry, Kili. I wish..." but Kili just grunted, almost headbutting him while he freed himself from Fili's clinging embrace. 

"Don't be ridiculous. There's nothing _you_ have to apologise for. I can't believe Thorin managed to become an even bigger ass in the last year. I hadn't thought it was possible! Now hold still, that cut over your eye still isn't clean and we can't risk it getting infected."

Kili manhandled Fili's face, or tried to, because when Fili saw what his brother was using to disinfect his wounds he recoiled, speechless for just a moment, before

"Where the _hell_ did you get that?!" 

He grabbed the bottle in Kili's hand, a bottle that had definitely not been in their flat this morning. Or ever.  
It was a bottle of old, old Macallan Whisky.  
Thorin's favourite, which he guarded like he would his first born.  
... Probably better. 

His brother just snorted at him, trying to get the bottle back to continue his "first aid". 

"From Thorin's liquor stores, where else? He really should keep a better lock on that."

He used Fili's moment of flabbergasted surprise to take back the bottle, added a tiny bit to a clean tissue and moved back to tend to the last cut. 

"Did you really think I would let him get away with this? With any of it? He's going to find quite a few bits and pieces missing in the coming days."

Anticipating Fili's question he added, trying, and failing, to keep the bitterness out:  
"It's not like either of you paid any attention to me whatsoever. Like lions fighting over a piece of meat, seriously..." 

Seemingly done with disinfecting his cuts with _one of the most expensive Whiskys on the whole damn planet_ his little brother jumped up, opened the refrigerator and threw him a lumpy little bag. 

"Put that on your face, you don't want it to swell. And try not to open those cuts again, I only had already cracked nuts and I still want to eat them afterwards, k?" 

Nuts as cooling pads. That seemed more like the brother he knew. Still... 

"Don't worry about it, I'm not in any trouble and he can't prove anything.", Kili interrupted before Fili could even voice the question on his tongue. 

When Kili sat back down, a cheap wooden box with little baubles in his hands, it was a different emotion that made the words stuck like sand in his throat. 

He picked up one of the tiny, fragile ornaments, not quite believing his eyes. 

"These are...?" 

"Mothers favourites. Yes. I saw them on his tree and I saw how he was treating you and I... couldn't... not do it."

They felt like diamonds in his hands, light and precious, and something he had never thought he would see again. He had picked these, together with mother, all those years ago. A tiny piece of her after he had to come to terms with not having anything at all. 

He carefully, oh, so carefully, put them back in the box and to the side, before pulling Kili back into his arms once more. 

There was a lump there that wasn't supposed to be there. 

Kili moved back nervously, laughing sheepishly and obviously not sure how Fili would react. 

"Well, if I was already at it anyway..." 

They ended up spending an hour just getting Kili out of his clothes without breaking any of the valuables he insisted were theirs by right.  
They would have words, Fili vowed, about sudden kleptomanic tendencies and where Kili learned that or where he had even secured everything so that he didn't sound like a walking Christmas tree! 

But that was for tomorrow. 

Today was for celebrating their unexpected gifts - and each other.

**Author's Note:**

> [My Tumblr](https://patchworkideas.tumblr.com/post/189668618350/gatheringfiki-the-following-ficlet-was-written)


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